The presented research investigates the fracture behavior of SiO2 thin coatings under mode I loading conditions based on the double cantilever beam (DCB) test described in ASTM D5528. Organic-inorganic layers based on SiO2 were obtained by the sol-gel method and applied by dip-coating onto 16Mo3 steel substrates. At the current stage of research, the coating thickness is at the submicron level. Two sets of multilayered samples were manufactured: 1) steel – epoxy resin, and 2) steel – sol-gel – epoxy resin. The proposed approach is based on comparative methods and the first sample set is a reference for the second one that includes sol-gel layers. Additionally, acoustic emission (AE) has been applied to collect data on fracture events that appeared in the multilayer system.